Chiaroscuro
by Tonnai
Summary: Marinette receives a miraculous stone when she's twenty-three instead of thirteen. That doesn't make things any easier. (Miraculous Retold)
1. A Way Out

**TAGS: CANON DIVERGENCE, CHARACTER DEATH, VIOLENCE, ANIMAL TENDENCIES,  
****NEVER REVEAL, SLOW BURN, LOVESQUARE, FRIENDS/ LOVERS/ ENEMIES, SEXUAL CONTENT**

**THIS IS AN EXTREME DIVERGENCE FIC. IT IS EXPLICIT. THERE IS NO TIKKI OR PLAGG. CHARACTERS ARE ADULTS/ "OOC". MIRACULOUS USERS HAVE FRENCH NAMES, DIFFERENT OUTFITS, WEAPONS, AND SIGNATURE MOVES. DON'T LIKE? DON'T READ.**

**CHIAROSCURO**

**Chapter One: A Way Out**

* * *

Shouts and cries of a Confederate defeat played from a battered Panasonic box sitting in the atelier's corner. Electric flashes of fluorescent orange and red ignited office walls. Actors' screams shot across workstations. With unholy clamor, the sound of church bells wobbled while their towers burned. Rhett Butler was escaping a torched city, proud and naive Scarlett O'Hara in tow, and Marinette Dupain-Cheng sat transfixed as bullets cuffed their carriage.

"Ma ballerine," Sylvie Cavey warned Marinette in a sing-song voice. As the première couturière, Cavey held no favor for the distracting motion pictures. However, being Sunday morning, she allowed the atelier's skeleton staff to liven their day in small ways despite occasional infractions. Marinette hinged on 'occasional'.

She flushed with embarrassment at her superior's disapproval, nickname aside, and tried to blink away her imagination and the film's mesmerizing bursts of color. She sat safely in the real world and couldn't afford to lose focus while double-folding chiffon binds. It was delicate work and even tiny lapses were glaringly apparent; with a grimace she began to redo her seam.

"Coffee's made," someone called from the back. Marinette pursed her lips.

"It was two hundred contacts by seven o'clock, and the conference started at ninety-five! There's a binder on my desk―" Nathalie Sancoeur, the tailleur's creative director, knocked her hip into Marinette's station as she whipped past. Marinette clenched her teeth through a muted growl.

"As God is my witness, they're not going to lick me! I'm going to live through this―" the television was somehow loud again and Scarlett, with cheeks dusted by dry earth and fists clenched at her side, framed a silhouette before a ruby sunset. A burning sky reflected in Marinette's eyes. "―if I have to lie, steal, cheat, or kill, as God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again―"

"Are you kidding me, _really?_" Cavey snapped. "Someone just turn it off already!"

Marinette blinked. Her trance broke on the small screen smothered to static, then black. One of the new hires was holding their thumb into the worn television casing, the wails of crying women and children fading from ears, replaced by the giggles of her coworkers. Blushing heat again seared across Marinette's cheeks.

She ducked her head low against the feel of Cavey's eyes on her. Jumping back to work, she rapid-fired eighteen binds through gauzy fabric― then her cell phone buzzed through her purse.

Cavey positively growled.

She could ignore the call. She didn't have to answer. Nothing was going on. It was Alya's ringtone. Her friend gave up after the third ring or so. She'd call back on her lunch break, or shoot her a text that night. Alya knew she was at work right now, she never called during the day― the ring went dead.

Then it started again.

"_Marinette,_" Cavey snarled―

"J-Just a moment!" Frantic and luckless, Marinette quickly confirmed the textile was tightly held before snatching her cell. She wedges it between her shoulder and ear. "Alya, Alya― Hi! Hello. What's up? I can't talk long. What's going on?"

"Where are you? Are you okay?!"

Marinette blinked. Her agition vanished with her friend's raw concern. "Um, yeah, I'm fine."

"Where are you?" she repeated.

"I'm at work right now." Marinette adjusted her phone to glance over her shoulder. The atelier was business as usual, nothing amiss. "Is everything okay?"

"No, it's not. There's an akuma on the loose and―"

"Chat Noir?"

"I don't know. It doesn't look good. You need to go home right now!"

Marinette went quiet, confused, wondering what in the world Alya was talking about; the sudden silence put her friend into a panic. "Mari? Mari, are you still there?! Can you hear me?!"

"Whoa, Alya, whoa. I'm here. I can hear you. What's going on? Tell me slowly. Do I have to warn people?"

A positive mm-mm sound rumbled back at her and Marinette caught the hard scratch in her friend's voice. It sounded like she'd been screaming. "It's all over the news but you shouldn't waste another moment. Get out Marinette. Get your mom and dad and go to safety!"

"Okay," she promised, setting her fabric and supplies quickly aside. "I'll head home now."

"Marinette― I―"

With her purse half-slung over her shoulder, she paused to listen to her friend hesitate. "Yeah?"

"Marinette, if something happens―"

"Alya?"

"Just be safe, okay?!" she snapped. "Be careful! Don't do anything stupid! I'll never forgive you!"

Marinette's didn't hide her blossoming smile. Those were usually her lines. "Fine, I got it. I'm leaving right now. I'll text you when I'm home, okay?"

An audible sigh answered her. "Okay. I'm gonna try to get a hold of Nino now. Promise me you'll text," she growled.

Marinette laughed. "I said I would. Love ya, bye." She ended the call feeling cherished Alya contacted her before Nino. Whatever came of them dating on-and-off again since lycée ended, she was assured her friendship would always have shining moments where she eked out ahead. Not admitting, perhaps, this time was because Nino had a terrible habit of ignoring his phone.

"Madame Cavey?" Marinette withheld a grimace. Right. Cavey was already glaring at her. Hidden by bloated cheeks and seaweed hair, her beady eyes burned through like fire coral. They struck Marinette with a glower as if she was disturbing the universe. "I apologize to interrupt, but um, I received a call about an active akuma and I'd like―"

"An akuma? Now?"

"Yes, and I'd like to head home."

"I haven't heard anything about an akuma."

And thus, it didn't matter. She was starting a new dress today. Client body proportions and mock-up notes from their creative director surrounded Cavey's workstation like a whelk home. Bolduc ribbon crisscrossed between her ragged claws and the mannequin, a lattice pricked by glass pins spewing from her forearm's barnacle pincushion. In a way unique to octopoda, she seamlessly rotated between her soft measuring tape, calculator, graphite pens, drafting curve, tracing paper, and Marinette's persistence.

"I just got a call about it." Her thumb swiped her phone's home screen to the news app where she skimmed for information. "I'm sure there's a report somewhere."

"Finish the chiffon. Then we'll see."

Marinette bit the inside of her cheek. "I'll finish it tomorrow before lunch but I need―"

"Oh là, ma ballerine, listen to me." Cavey set aside her bolduc and scissors and pins and stared down her protégé. "You are very refined. Your work is elegant and feminine, never juvenile. Madame Sancoeur likes your touch. But you have strayed into the world of fashion. You are _new_ here."

She wasn't. She'd been an apprentice for three years and a deuxième qualifiée for two. But that perception was the difference between her and a head seamstress.

"I understand Madame," Marinette quietly conceded and tried, at least, for a compromise. "I'll finish the chiffon first."

"And then look at the organza on #7."

She gnawed her lower lip. "And then I'll look at the organza."

"Good. You may leave afterward."

"Thank you Madame."

Purse slipping away, Marinette returned to her station with head bowed. She staggered through mental riptide, swimming thoughts caught between Alya's warning and the empty gulf of media coverage. She looked at her news app: 7°C, late sunset. A new hire, Mireille Caquet, joined CNBC 25. Education faculty benefits were driving up tuition. There was a podcast for the new tax code.

How sincere was her friend, Marinette wondered, if there was no news? How could Alya, living in Québec, truly know of an akuma otherwise?

She looked out the small window to her left, eyes unseeing as she turned inwards, resisting the churn of uneasiness and the memory of her friend's strained voice. Maybe it was a mistake, she thought. Maybe Alya saw wrong, mixed up her spots and heroes, and called without thinking. For all best intentions, there was someone, something, somewhere, but Alya was mistaken. Marinette wasn't in trouble. There wasn't an akuma. And if there was, the mysterious hero Chat Noir certainly―

Like a child's toy playing in another room, a distant ringing caught her ears.

She blinked at the gentle din and refocused her gaze upon avenue Montaigne, the allée des Veuves, a place made famous by women in black. Scattered across its one-way street were abandoned cars piling upon each other and its tarmac laid decorated with discarded shopping bags. Through the white noise of mechanical whirrs and shuffling fabric, Marinette caught the dim burst of frantic screaming from the street below. People were running.

No, she thought. People were fleeing.

"I thought I told you to turn that television off!"

But it wasn't Atlanta, Georgia this time. It was Paris.

Marinette leaned over her table, hands pressing upon the small window. A wailing of sirens cut through muted ferment and she felt glass reverberate against her palm like an invisible pulse. It was growing stronger. An upsurge of fear clogged her throat and she gasped through a pinch of air, "Madame Cavey―!"

A deep collision jolted her heart. She took three steps before an echoing boom, closer, shook the atelier. Pitched backwards against a workstation, Marinette fell against a woman crumbled to her knees. She whimpered and stared in disbelief.

"It's an akuma!" someone screamed.

"W-Where's Ch-Chat Noir?" her coworker dribbled.

Marinette didn't know. "He's fighting the akuma."

Her coworker's eyes squeezed shut and she held her temples. She was shivering with fear.

"It'll be okay," Marinette promised. "He's going to save―"

Bright shrieks bore through Marinette's reassurances. She looked up and saw a funnel of women scrambling for the exit. They fought each other to push through the narrow doorway but one woman was caught, defying all the force pressed against her. She coughed and sputtered and Marinette thought for a breathless moment she was being crushed until she heard her plea clearly: "―don't let it _take me!_"

Marinette's hands covered her mouth, withholding a silent gasp. The woman was lifted from the ground, torn between the clutches of the atelier staff and a monstrous stone fist. One was clearly stronger. It wasn't a competition. There wasn't even a chance.

From Marinette's angle, she watched the woman simply disappear into the stairwell. Her hollers bounced within the hallway's echo, then stifled.

"Oh― Oh my god, it took Claire. The akuma took Claire," another coworker, Seline, whispered.

Marinette trembled.

She couldn't stand. Her legs gave out as she tried to rise from the cold floor and she grabbed desperately at desks and mannequins to keep balance. Alya's distant urging steadied her: they had to get out. They needed to go somewhere safe. Laboriously she moved forward as her coworkers withdrew. They were terrified, some sobbing in fear, gathered tightly in the doorway but unable to step beyond. Marinette weakly stumbled through them.

She stood on the cusp of horror. Through a gaping maw in the atelier's siding, she looked upon a broken city. Her lungs fell to the razor of March air, of smoke, of hazy debris that streamed from broken buildings. She saw the road decorated in slabs of mortar and concrete ripped straight from its foundation. Wrought iron balconies bent astray like thorn-bush veins. Every window of the Parisian storefronts was gone, blown out, and broken sprinklers gushed water aimlessly, ruining merchandise. Crackling embers fell on the breeze.

Everything was silent.

She reached forward towards nothing.

"Move! Move! _Move_," barked Cavey's command. Marinette jolted and gasped as the swell of bodies surged forward, a precipitate to a stampede. Someone shouldered her back and carelessly knocked her aside; she clutched at the staircase's mangled handrail, boneless. She would have stayed there if not for a stranger's hand clasping her wrist and wrenching her along. Without choice or thought she followed the group bleeding into the ruined avenue.

Exiting to the curbside, tripping on scattered rock, tipsy, Marinette looked back at the atelier on instinct. Other than the massive hole punched in by the akuma, the building was fine. A strange relief tickled through her stupor followed by insurmountable guilt; the street was in ruins and one of their staff was dead.

Forget the atelier, she cursed. She needed to get to her family―

She startled to hear a groan. Turning left, she saw a man slowly approach. Half his face had been dipped in wet cement, fused shut, and there was blood splashed across his open chest. Next to him a businesswoman limped forward. She dragged a leg of pure stone.

They reached out to Marinette and the other seamstresses. "Help," begged the woman. "It's heavy― Help me!"

"My dears," sobbed Seline. She broke from their crowd and embraced the man and woman in solace. "Come, lie down," she tended. "The SMUR will be arriving soon. You can rest now."

But they wouldn't. The woman immediately grabbed at Seline and fell to her knees. The shirtless man struggled forward, face frozen in speechless agony. His one good eye darted wildly over the girls. No one besides Celine had dared move forward and, as if possessed, he turned back and rounded on her compassion. Wrapping his arms around Seline's shoulders while his cohort closed around her knees, the two ferociously wrangled her to the ground.

Seline screamed as she was caught. Collective gasps and shrieks broke around Marinette. Half the staff backed away but half darted forward to save one of their own. Marinette teetered between, unable to do more than sway in nausea. Hands fell upon their coworker. Pulling, twisting, screeching in panic, they set her free as the couple went stiff and bloodless.

As if cast into their own kiln, they tightened and became rigid. Rudiments of organic form and imperfect shape sloped and arched into artisan craft. Without muscle or skin, blood and body drained away to the strict chisel of human and, in the manner of divine decree, distorted and morphed, their own faces faded away.

With arms domed and extended, encompassing air, they didn't topple. The man and woman were captured in the rigor mortis of their transfigured bodies.

Seline collapsed into her coworkers' arms in bawling tears. Her hands gripped their stark white sewing coats, frightened wails wracking her body.

"It hurts, it hurts," she bayed. Marinette thought she meant her fear or if she'd broken something squirming free. But as people backed away and Seline was given space, the cause was apparent: her hands were slabs of stone clamped into atelier coats. From directly touching the victims, Seline too was condemned.

Marinette recoiled. Bile and breakfast hit the back of her throat and she turned away, hands holding her mouth shut.

She jostled as her coworkers ripped away, clamoring as they realized this was the second coming. The preliminary attack by the akuma was nothing to this morphed torture: the population was infected and there was no antidote. It was every man for themselves. Surrounded by her associates, Marinette realized this was the sound of a half-hundred people breaking into panic.

"Don't leave me!" Seline cried, reaching out. Snot and spittle ran down her face. White atelier coats, ripped from her friends, were abandoned in her granite clutch.

They all ran.

Their stampede cut across Rue Francois to keep northbound on Montaigne but no loyalties held. Devil taking the hindmost, women darted down alleys or sequestered themselves in broken storefronts. Others stopped to fight with friends. Two hundred paces in, Marinette was digging her fingers into a crippling side stitch and sparing no breath. Push through, she hissed at herself. Get to Caulaincourt. Get to mom and dad―

Wheezing, she collapsed behind a fallen slab of building mortar. Deco bombs bedecked the sidewalk and more hung precariously overhead. It wasn't safe but she couldn't move. Her lungs burned and she felt a white-flash fever. Helping herself to gasps of dusty air, she leaned back and rested. Her eyes closed. Faintly she could make out the sound of distant fire, a far-off lion's roar of flames, and the strange whale song of city sirens. She shook her head. The word hadn't gotten out in time and now it seemed too late to bother.

Get to rue Caulaincourt, she repeated. It was a 45 minute walk home. She could run it in 30.

But she didn't know if she could sprint again. Her abdomen was twisted into an awful cramp. No, she absolutely couldn't―

Do it, she hissed. There wasn't a choice!

Standing on fawn legs, she protested the pain by imagining her parents desperately waiting for her: her father's caring hand reinforcing her mother's shoulder, her pinched eyes searching, searching, praying their only daughter simply round the corner―

Because they had to be waiting, and not something else―

Weak steps turned to a trot, to a jog, to an ambling race. She maneuvered between abandoned cars clogging the one-way street and their soprano alarms, keeping to the middle of the road until she came upon the open circle of the Roosevelt Metro.

She hardly recognized the roundabout. A battle had clearly swept through the well known destination and a police triage was trying to reconcile the damage. Men and women mingled, recovered victims off the street. A line of citizens sat upon the curb waiting treatment. Lungs burning, heart soaring, Marinette lifted her arm and waved enthusiastically as she rushed to greet them.

An officer caught her in his periphery. He dropped his stance to defensive guard and raised his gun. "Halt!"

Marinette tripped over her own feet. The barrel swung towards her chest. She saw it with her eyes but didn't believe it.

"Stay where you are," the gendarmerie demanded. Other officers organized in formation against Marinette. "Raise your hands―"

She slowly raised them but felt nothing, only able to think of her own shock.

"It's back―"

"Get down!"

"_Fire!_"

Marinette's bravery buckled against the discord of gunfire and she dropped to the ground faster than gravity, cracking her knees against the road. A sob of intense pain broke from her and she collapsed into a ball without care for the spattering of bullet casings. They pinged against her back while shots and recoils deafened her like thirty baking sheets crashing to the floor. She dry heaved. Something wasn't right. Clasping her left shoulder, she rolled aside until something sharp, broken glass and limestone, stopped her.

She laid on her back and withdrew her hand. It dripped red. She'd been hit by a stray bullet. Everyone was screaming.

A shadow blanketed their group. Marinette looked skyward.

A mound, a goliath, an ogre of black alumen loomed before her, casting the entire Metro and her pitiful company into darkness. Bullets sank harmlessly into the monster's body of earth and stone; a simple earthquake shudder dropped the iron fragments away like sequins, nothing done to corral its ire. A bellow rippled from a cavernous maw of grotesque design, an endless concave pit of gnashing stalactite fangs and flowstone. Chunks of basalt and sand spewed forth while slippery, hot lava drooled down its body. Without eyes, careless to its path, the titan advanced. Its swollen elephant legs hammered the ground to tremors. It was coming right for her―

A terror froze Marinette where she laid, the fear of death in her heart.

But something gentle dipped beneath her knees and neck and lifted―

Chat Noir. He looked shocked―

Marinette pulled on his lapels. "Watch―"

The exploding battle's treble reverberated to her marrow and, although Chat Noir made to leap high, the full push of momentum never carried through. A hesitation in slow eternity, her position dropped from his arms. She felt the gradual shift of weight like a slow yawn, her hands releasing his coat and slipping down, grasping uselessly for a hold against the blood drenched jacket. The tumble was slow, awkward, her head leading her doubled over descent―

A very fine pain spun from her shoulder and neck as it collided against the sidewalk. A watery pop liquified somewhere in her inner ear. Chat Noir fell on top of her, groaning as his ears flattened against his head. She blinked at the sluggish, fuzzy outline of a black cat struggling to balance. Someone had set off a stun grenade.

"Are you all right?" she croaked and regretted. Every word sounded like it was beneath water. Every thought hurt.

"Eh," he mumbled against her collar, "schist happens."

No, she didn't hear that right. She definitely didn't hear that right.

"Chat Noir!" a stranger cried. A black ear flicked to the voice and Paris's cryptic cynosure got his paws beneath him just in time. His signature claws swept to action against the malevolent force of nature, slicing deep into the monstrous roughcast fist as it descended. The Gigas howled and withdrew, a volley of rock bleeding from its slashed palm and spraying the people below.

Nothing hit Marinette. Weight leveled protectively over her, Chat Noir bade his body as a shield. She could see him grimace as stones hailed from the akuma's repeated onslaught and felt the torture of every deflected hit reverberate down his shoulders, torso, to knees. She worried how long he'd been fighting―

Something dropped in her chest.

How long had he been fighting?

Chin set firm, metallic claws dual-wielded like ten razor knives, clothing deranged and dirty, Chat Noir stubbornly resisted exhaustion. His short blonde hair laid in sweaty tangles and shallow cuts wept from his exposed face and neck. They trailed down his throat to collect along his collar where his suit's protective ascot was stained a deep, poppy red.

Like an anvil dropping off the bow of a ship, Marinette's thoughts caught on the terrible halt. She couldn't breathe, could hardly think, as she lay motionless.

How long had Paris just _accepted_ it would be saved?

"Chat Noir." That was his name. That's what he was called. But Chat Noir was a _person_ and there, beneath him, she saw only the weakening shell of a man.

He looked down at her―

**Bok choy, aurora borealis, matcha tea, venom. His eyes were emeralds, regalia magatama, caught on lantern fires. They shifted like ammolite, green with flecks of orange and red, slithering through shades like the bellies of kraits in tall grass. She felt a clasp upon her lungs as his vision hypnotized, a strangle as he captivated her within a tendril of attention―**

Thunder clapped in the call of a hundred inhuman screams scoring through the Metro's circlet, resurrecting their Creator's strength. Stone men charged down the city's star-point streets to the campaign's apex, barrelling through barricades, smashing sidewalk Lindens, and compressing cars into something like throw rugs. Nothing stopped them. The converted beasts intended to crash into their Creator and Chat Noir alike.

Chat Noir leapt to his feet. Marinette fought her own paralysis. Her eyes took in their enclosing options and little filtered through her panic. Those citizens who could run had long since scattered from the sphere of danger. Too many remained though, trapped and vulnerable. They had to get away, had to get somewhere safe.

Chat Noir's bagh nakh disappeared in a softly luminous pop. Tail lashing in irritation, he had other ideas for the enemy's blitzkrieg. "The Artcurial!"

"What? What are you doing?"

"I'm going to draw them away," he shouted, already running off. "Get to the Artcurial! The Hôtel!"

Marinette didn't have much for argument. With little time to act, she wobbled to her feet. Her knees felt like shattered dinner plates and a dizziness lagged her sight. She distantly touched her injured shoulder, the wound shallow but still wet. Blurry outlines of the curbside and Hôtel Marcel's iron fence directed her to the entrance.

Much of it was already destroyed. The ground quivered with the power of the approaching akumas' charge and the old building's imminent, promised collapse terrified her. The noise behind her was growing fiercer, however, and a primitive thrill for survival won over. She hobbled for her life, passing a man on his hands and knees watching the akumas' destructive advance. His face was pale with fear.

"Run!" she screamed.

He didn't move.

The wail of his death throes came on her heels and she thought a stony hand brushed her shoulder―

Marinette threw herself past the lobby doors just before their frame collapsed with the building's broken foundation. Akuma screamed as they were crushed beneath two stories of concrete. Marinette spat and heaved, dust coating her tongue. She grabbed at her face, frantically clawing at whatever was in her eyes. It burned and she was going to vomit and― and― and―

Chat Noir hadn't diverted the entire charge. Some akuma subordinates remained. She could hear them feeding on the helpless left behind.

People didn't die quietly.

Shivering, she laid down. She touched her forehead, her neck, shoulders, hips, and thighs. She couldn't bend her knees and the wound in her shoulder throbbed to the point her entire left arm was numb. She let it lay uselessly at her side.

"I'm alive," she whispered. But for how long, she despaired.

She was painfully aware of the screaming outside, the darkness, the smell, the fear, like a snare tightening its looped cord around her throat. She was in hell, she thought miserably.

Chat Noir was supposed to end this. He was supposed to save them!

Fat tears collected in the corner of her eyes, threatening to spill down dusty cheeks. He was. He absolutely was saving them. He was out there risking his life, pushing past the boundaries of human strength and stamina, as their miraculous herald.

Sitting there alone, doing nothing, was Marinette.

"Marinette?"

She gasped and flinched at her own name. She thought she recognized the voice.

"F-Fu-yishēng?" she coughed.

"Marinette, is that really you?" he gasped.

She could hardly see him. The man's small outline seemed to be laying a few paces away beyond an aperture of light. Particles of dust stirred by the building's wreckage glistened between them. Summoning what little strength she had, Marinette laid her weight onto cold forearms and army-crawled to his side.

She pushed herself upright and fretted. "Fu-yishēng, what are you doing here? What's happening? Are there others? Are we safe?"

"Are you all right?" he quietly asked.

Marinette nodded yes, dazed. She was anything but. Sickness churned in her stomach and her throat burned with dry soot. Her eyes were encrusted with whatever powder came from collapsed walls. Her hair was errant and clung to a sweat drenched back. Her left arm was matted with blood. Her clothing could do no more to absorb the bleeding. But sitting next to a friend, she felt a little warmth. She was all right.

"Good." Fu reached out to gently squeeze her hand. "There isn't an exit… but there is a way out."

That didn't make sense. It hurt to think actually.

"Marinette," he lifted her hand towards him. "It's going to be you."

Something dropped into her palm. She instinctively brought it to her side. The lacquered box glowed in the low light.

"Put them on."

Her head throbbed. "Put what on?" she wondered and clicked open the box―

**Like a chrysanthemum unfolding to the long morning, her heart awakened.**

**It opened to soft candlelight flickering upon crystal fragments, bursts of blazing light and color that caught fire to dust motes in a glittering swirl. Hazy fog of satin and silk caressed her, entwined her, thickening and convalescing as if alive. Song captured her, masked revelers chanting as they danced a spell, a vow, entrenching her within their writhing weave. ****The vow, iridescent with the promise of all desires, coiled around her throat. The serenade was suffocating, painfully thick as it clenched her neck. She gasped and felt the words slipping past her lips, inside her, down to her pulse.**

**Her heart fluttered, and her soul sang― **_**Marinette!**_** it was caroling. **_**Marinette!**_** it was a choir―**

A crescendo of monsters screamed at the revealed lorelei, their wild belting breaking beyond the wails of dying men. Marinette's microcosm popped like a soap bubble, the rushed return to reality like finding herself mid-crosswalk, car horns blaring, a smash of steel and squealing tires burning rubber over her leaking brain.

She looked at Fu, half-crazed, once-upon-a-time in another world.

His look was knowing. "The earrings are a miraculous stone, Marinette. You must accept it and save us!"

And her world went upside down. A miraculous stone was the ethereal benefactor of Chat Noir. Every Parisian― man, woman, child― knew this, just as they knew of his manic duel against Papillon. But now she held one? In her palm? Like that? So simply?!

"Me?!" The box dropped from trembling hands.

"Papillon is too powerful! He has grown in strength with every akuma possession. Chat Noir can no longer fight without his other half," Fu rushed to explain. "You're the only one now."

Marinette hardly caught a word beyond the akumas' bellows. The descant drummed and reverberated over her pit of smoke and ashes, festering into a rabid roar. A feverish clamor racketed the building's collapsed entry. She could hear them scaling the building above.

"Marinette!"

The frame of the lobby's ceiling whined and groaned as steel cantilevers overhead were ripped away. A support beam crashed to the floor.

"Y-Yīshēng Fu!" she cried out.

Dust showered over them. The pierce of light expanded their hideaway den. Fu cursed and clutched for the earrings where they'd fallen free, but only gathered a single ruby gem from where it rolled his way.

He couldn't reach the other. Marinette could see now. He was crushed beneath rubble from the hips down. He was pinned. "Fu," she whispered.

"Marinette, you _must!_"

Light illuminated her citadel in rivulets. Conspicuous, the yet free earring lay in a shrine of dust, small and still.

Marinette picked it up. She didn't pause. She didn't think. There wasn't time.

She just closed her eyes and hooked it through her lobe―

**Incandescent light exploded around her, twisting into a piercing drill that bore into her sternum. She felt burst apart but warm, skinless yet satiated, innards ripped out and pressed together until she choked on her own heart in her throat. She needed to run. She needed to breathe. She needed to know words, the language that would allow her to ride stars and dance stairways. She needed to move forward, lift to the light, and―**

**And the slate wasn't wiped clean. She saw them immediately, others with leering faces, and saw herself through them. Fixated on her every move, they tracked her like a predator, attention undivided, fractured pupils wide and absorbed. In the thousand gem cuts of their eyes, she saw her own glowing reflection, bloodless and tense. She was naked, screaming, burning against the atmosphere's friction, shining in intense light, traveling faster than sound, wreathed in wishes, a―**

**A saccharine song of consecration, an abstraction whipped in icing, she was an elevation without title. She spun out of control, arms outstretched like a five year-old catching on the balance of a tipsy bicycle. The conflagration of her arrival was brilliant and beautiful and bodily mutilated, Burmese neck and Congo fangs, a puddle of flesh and organs smelling like cooked cinnamon. She was stilled in grace, without reign or power beyond the touch of human hands. But they sawed and soldered, molded in golden gilding, found her state of existence like architecture, an elegant solution to a problem, and crafted her a body that drifted along a solar Nile of past benefactors while she―**

**She thought she'd lost her mind. **

**Unable to reclaim that which eluded her, unable to remember faces or the inclination of bodies beyond red, she was the―**

**The chalk of white pumicite on black skin, a saffron-spotted bournous tightly clasped, the―**

**The canvas of cinnabar paint calligraphy, a bespeckled obi belt firmly knotted, the―**

**The steel of an arming sword raised for conquest, a dappled duelist gauntlet confidently donned, the―**

**The tumbling ground rising up in turning over Fortune's dial, peaking, as she stumbled onto that first step of rising flowers, blooming, the promised waltz sailing her to helium dreamscapes of pillowtalk and down feathers, flying high, soaring above, surging on the wishes that fell to her name, that made a path for her, above the cacophony of man, an orchestra of diminishing keys to rise Up―**

**Up, where all else faded and fell upon the major lift to that **_**aka**_** God―**

"_Coccinelle!_"

**Like a foam topped waterspout cast down, headlong into the sea, she fell.**

Her eyes flashed open.

Two akuma wailed as they charged, brandishing iron beams like swords. One slashed down and she leaned back, dodging the mad strike by supernatural instinct before grabbing the aggressor's overextended wrist. With a pull forward, she cuffed the back of its head and sent it lumbering into fallen debris. Its counterpart didn't hesitate. It charged straight-on, whipping its weapon left and right with relentless strength. She pounced high, firmly grappling its shoulder with one hand and snapped its head up and back with a powerful knee to the face. A painful crack met her ears. The akuma dropped.

She looked up. A third akuma, far larger than the others, forced its way through the broken ceiling. She gave no pause in attack. Just as it fell to the stone floor, a dynamic punch connected with its gut, sending the monster tumbling backwards. Something sandy but viscous coughed from its mouth. She flicked the spittle from her cheek.

It felt like grout.

Were they even human anymore?

She gasped as she was tackled from behind. She fell hard on her face, arms restrained in a new akuma's surprise attack. Despite its size, the small beast's grapple was impenetrable. It held firm around her back, snarling and biting her shoulder. She cursed and rolled to the side― in time to see a plummeting stone foot. It smashed open the baby akuma's cranium where hers had just been.

The grip went lax. Eyes wide, heart racing, she looked up at the lumbering, largest akuma. Ankle next to her temple, it slowly wiped its foot of cement muck― of brains and blood.

The foot lifted, its second attack coming much like the first. She tightened her torso, hands pushing herself into a curled handstand and back handspring to avoid the quick ten-tonne drop of heel. The akuma roared and rounded on her with a heavy bolo punch. She dodged the fist but caught its chiseled arm against her sternum with a wheeze. The akuma couldn't withdraw; arm clenched firmly against her body, she retaliated with a swinging axe-kick. Her boot's steel toe sharply collided with the back of his head and crushed its knee joint on her descent. It collapsed, tongue lolling, moaning―

She hesitated. The akuma's arm was held firm and wrenched unnaturally as he sprawled in pain. It wouldn't take much. With so little effort she could twist it clean off and end it― end _him_―

No. She had to think―

"Coccinelle," rasped Fu. She looked up. He was dredged from the wreckage and looking worse for wear, legs askew and broken. His dark eyes were studying her.

When she dropped the arm with mercy, his look was dashed.

"It is not over yet," he warned. "You should―"

"I'm getting you to safety first," she interrupted and gingerly approached his injuries, cautious where to touch or lift. Fu clearly disagreed but said no more, leaving her to work through the shaky technicalities of carrying him in a fireman's save. With only one hand free, she grappled, leapt, and hoisted them from the hotel's cemetery pit.

Her breath caught at the first glances of despair; shades of grey cast the Metro in a strange palette of stark undertones. If she hardly recognized the place before, it was an alien planet to her then.

"You can fix this," Fu promised through gritted teeth. For all his pain, he was trying to reassure her. "You are Coccinelle, the benefactor of rebirth."

She nodded, hearing him, but not quite understanding. He noticed. "We will speak later. The akuma has called its remaining children for protection. Chat Noir needs you now. He cannot win alone. Find him and work together to destroy Papillon's signet."

She looked at him, unsure.

"I am fine. The streets are safe for now. Go," he bit out with waning strength.

Uneasy, she placed him in an abandoned enclave along the Metro's empty streets before heading northeast along avenue Matignon. It wasn't difficult to see what path the miniature akuma took with destruction in their wake.

With a super-powered sprint, she quickly came upon the prominent panorama of the Église Saint-Augustin at the end of boulevard Malesherbes. Jeanne d'Arc cut the vista with a forward charge, heels deep in stirrups and sword brandished high― Marinette involuntarily shuddered. Shaking her head of silliness and ghosts, she crept forward until she stopped beside the bronze cast heroine.

Studying the scene, she noticed police cars lined the curbside. Mayor Bourgeouis was present too, hunched over the church's portico, wrist-deep in something that looked like red jelly. He was screaming a name and words she couldn't piece together. Corpses of akuma littered the streets around them, stragglers who had tried to approach and were mercilessly shot down.

Chat Noir and the titan were nowhere to be found.

Her eyes narrowed. Attention turned skyward, she surveyed the church's rose window. It was blown inward. The broken frame of wrought iron twisted like gnarled ivy seeking light. They must be inside, she thought. Yet no one entered―

"Hey, you! Stay where you are! Raise your hands!"

Like déjà vu, she instinctively raised her hands in defense from the battalion. Except now she wore a bodice of crimson carapace, speckled black.

"It's following orders?"

"Who are you―"

"Who cares, shoot it―"

A woman's scream echoed in the church's antechamber loud enough to be heard outside. The gendarmerie spooked at the wail and Marinette wasted no opportunity. She dashed towards the police ranks, vaulting into the sky with a powered leap. Attention recovered, the police officers shouted in disbelief at her forward charge and freely fired upon the perceived attack. But unlike before, the firecracker of artillery was dimmed and deafened in her enhanced dress. She easily dodged the errant ammo and hurdled over their police carriages before dashing to the colonnade of ivory church columns.

Mayor Bourgeouis looked at her. A bloody lump lay between them, its insides splattered outside of its body.

He trembled. "Please―"

An enormous crash and the akuma's reverberating bellow from within the church stole her focus. She didn't wait to listen. She couldn't, she told herself.

She sprinted into the church and immediately saw the narthex destroyed. The nave was little better: smashed pews were thrown into a corner, dark liquid spattered the floor and domed ceilings, and the wall draperies were shredded by long, claw-like lacerations. From the hallmark window, broken glass shattered over the floor like a thousand broken baubles, spread across the tile in a sparkling garden of white diamonds. She neared and watched the pale shrapnel and light fade into a refracted rainbow of reds.

A woman laid very, very still in the center aisle.

The akuma titan huddled over her, the low rattle of shaky breathing puffing against her hair. A limp hand was cradled in his gravely grip. Together they laid in a puddle of currant mud, the wellspring dribbling from fresh claw-carvings chipped throughout the akuma's body.

"Ah," the low voice rumbled and wheezed. It looked up without eyes. Four long fissures had split its high cheek into ribbons that rippled in speech. "You appear at last, Coccinelle."

Her skin erupted in a prickling wave.

It spoke?

"I am Stoneheart." The ogre stood in impending threat and smiled tight. Its teeth were a locked jigsaw of stone icicles. It slowly stepped over its hostage, delicately, as if protecting a treasured prize. A clenched fist of dripping blood belied no gentleness for Marinette, however. "Give me your Miraculous and I will spare you."

Where was Chat Noir? Her palms were clammy. She blinked but nothing changed the world around her. This was her reality, her ultimatum. Grim, she fell into a defensive stance. "Don't try to reverse our roles, akuma. You're the―"

It clocked Marinette's stars with a haymaker punch. She sailed backwards, falling on her ass, tumbling over, a wake of cleared glass cutting into her shoulders.

Her vision swam. Was her head still attached? Could she move? She had to get away―

The akuma's foot slammed to the floor, crushing one of her shins and breaking the tibia straight through. She screamed with all her breath― Stoneheart's stone fists clutched her toso and cinched closed. It lifted her into the air. She couldn't breathe―

"Listen to me carefully, _bug_…" She strangled and choked at his suffocating squeeze. "Because of you, innocent people have been hurt. They've been killed―" Her ribcage shuddered lightning arcs of pain, the only thing keeping her attention from strange black clouds rolling in like fog, "―and enough is enough! Give me your earrings!"

"N-no…"

The akuma roared with mad laughter in a spew of mud. "Then _die_―"

She dropped to the ground. Air snapped into her lungs like a vacuum. She gasped, sick, as the world immediately saturated into blinding white. She tasted charcoal, smelled dust from pulverized mortar, heard a crescendo of conflict around her. She felt hot, numb, sweating. The noise was growing, a stranger's curses and the akuma's roars cutting through her addled senses. The unseen battle battered her brain and she winced, peeking through pinched eyes to catch Chat Noir going toe-to-toe with Stoneheart.

She'd never seen anything like it. He evaded and parried with gymnastic excellence, dancing around their opponent like Art Noveau, the unpredictable slash and crack of a whip, against Akuma Deco, a stack of concrete bricks.

The church was suffering for it. The air was clogged with smoky powder and the walls trembled. The force of Stoneheart's body shattered the front chancel. The building was a century and a half old but Marinette didn't think it could last a minute and a half more. Time was important. She had to do something. She had to help end this.

Wobbling and weak, she stood and made four paces before her body remembered her cracked leg. Searing, blazing pain licked up her spine and she flailed, stifling a scream. She fell forward hard.

"What are you _doing, _clumsy girl_?_!" Chat Noir shouted at her, leaping and weaving around Stoneheart. She flinched, but not for his words.

Mylène Haprèle laid in front of her. Her childhood friend was right there.

Blood drenched her clothes. It dyed the dreads of her thick nemean mane. Marinette hoped it wasn't hers. Marinette prayed she was alive.

But what was she even doing here? Why wasn't she home safe with―

A piercing glint of claret gold sparkled next to the woman. It was an engagement ring.

It was the signet.

"Oh, god," Marinette exhaled, feverish. Her abjection thrashed in her stomach and she bit her lip, desperately trying to swallow the rising cry. It felt like a flood smothering her heart with ardent memories. Pounding upon her in waves, Marinette recalled meeting in collège, their tender-shy hello, wearing matching barrettes, completing school projects together, painting each others' nails, playing with her shaggy wolf-dog, her father's treasured postcards from Mexico, Norway, England― knowing her friend for eleven years and, all the while, watching Ivan Bruel endure Mylène's flippant torture.

She bent over her friend, cradling her, crying, crumbling like sea-worn architecture. It wasn't Mylène's fault that Ivan chased her la bohème spirit― just as it wasn't his fault he'd suffered her to a breaking point, to becoming an akuma.

Marinette blinked through tears. So was this Papillon's power, then? All that he could accomplish? Twisting an unrequited love into a wrought prison, a death chamber in the sarcophagus of a church―

"_Stay away from her!_"

A body collided into her. Her partner's heavier frame, his clothing, armor, weapon, weakness, the weight of it all slammed into Marinette and smashed them against the crumbled iconostasis.

Marinette dry-heaved. She tried to sit up, struggling through the tangle and twist of each other's limbs. Dizzying blurs and a pounding throb through her vision kept her hunched over hands and knees; at least she couldn't feel her broken leg over a contending face―

"You bastard!" Like a flipped switch, Chat Noir charged: he leapt upon Stoneheart, slashing like a madman, dancing a game of shadow against the flurry of akuma fists. Marinette struggled in the background, slowly standing. She watched the scenario play in a strange, different reality.

"Wait, stop―" She wobbled, trying to steady her concussed line of sight. Blood dripped over glass-ridden tile.

"_You'll never take Mylène from me!_"

"Chat Noir―"

"_Then join her in death!_" he hissed and summoned his miraculous power.

"_No!_" Marinette screamed. Fu had bade her service to help Chat Noir, to defeat the akuma, to end Papillon's depravity― but not like this― "_Ivan, look out!_"

The human in Stoneheart stumbled.

The cat in Chat Noir struck. "_**Cataclysm!**_"

Uncontested metal claws sank into his arms, miraculous knives piercing a schael and limestone body like whipped cream. Stoneheart dissolved on contact: skin corrupted deep blue, then black, and liquified from chiseled marble to wet globs. Fibers of ashen stone-muscle oozed like lava, dark as ink. He recoiled, collapsing to his knees, wailing, clutching at his body. It waxed and waned in corporeal form as Papillon's illusion painfully wavered; he clamored in voice and vice as bubbling darkness dripped from him, screaming like never before― _human._

She was by his side at an instant. "Ivan!"

"My-mylène…" he sweated. Cast from Papillon's favor, he puddled like hot tar. Marinette trembled and hugged his body, trying to force it upright, but the tension of his oblong limbs fell lax as the spell and life within him faded.

"Ivan! Ivan, no!" It was too much. She was already too late. She fell with him to the floor. His eyes dimmed. With mounting horror she knew exactly what that meant. "_Ivan_―"

"He's fine."

Cold fear and disbelief filled Marinette. She whiplashed around to face Chat Noir. "He's fine?" she doubted. "He's _dying!_"

"He's fine," Chat Noir repeated, firm and thin-lipped. He paused on the painful squeeze of bruised ribs and bit out, "I destroyed his ring. It's like this every time."

She looked back at Ivan and coughed through a sob; he wasn't fine. He was a mutilation. Long gashes split his face, arms, and chest, and his pulse dimmed with every harrowing breath. He was slick with blood, trembling in her hold. She could barely keep him braced against her as his body slid heavy to the floor. "We have to get help," she babbled. "We have to call an ambulance. Call the police― they're right outside―"

Chat Noir filled the narrow box of her vision. She gasped and startled, falling to the side, but he didn't relent. From the tarnished steel toes of his boots, to the long drag of his ebony coat, to the crisp fold of his lapel―

She stared at the smear of blood there and went still.

"Are you really her?" he breathed.

She looked up. Their eyes met.

Marinette choked. Her sight dimmed and her face collapsed into quivering sorrow. Through watery vision she saw it: a thousand color-specks flickering through the expanse of his green eyes like drumming summer rain. This was why she accepted the miraculous stone. It was for him. She would never hide that.

"Yes," she whispered. A settling of reverence reaffirmed upon her heart. "It's me."

A small, wary smile touched his lips. "Then you can heal your friend," he lifted a curled hand, "with this. Do you know what it is?"

Marinette didn't but Coccinelle did. She knew immediately and inherently. Dry-mouthed, wet-eyed, she nodded.

Chat Noir released his palm. Long fingertips unfurled slowly to reveal an insect pinched by its wings.

She stared at the struggling creature. Little legs danced free as its great, fat abdomen wriggled. Flicks of its curled tongue wormed to the air, tasting defeat, pleading mercy against Chat Noir's gloved fingers with attanea caresses. There was no pulling free of the cat's catch.

More than printemps beauty and flowers, more than a fairy stealing butter and milk, this was an ancient parasite. It was ruining her city. It was devouring hope and life. It was a miraculous effigy: a compression of wickedness and splendor.

It was a moth. It was one, tiny, singular thing.

Worldless, Chat Noir offered her the task. Her heart stilled as her hands robotically wrapped around the evil machination. Without instruction, beyond instinct, as a hundred benefactors before her, she knew what to do, knew to become Rebirth:

"_**Renaissance,**_" her soul sang, and the color of her world became black and white.


	2. Not Everyone

**CHIAROSCURO**

**Chapter Two: Not Everyone**

* * *

She peeked an eye open. The clock said there were two hours left to sleep but her stomach rolled with urgency.

Oscillating waves of nausea banked her limits, threatening to overflow. She braced against the impacts best she could, breathing evenly and counting to ten. Marinette knew the best way to handle rising vomit was to take things slowly so she kept her tasks small and manageable: she slid her body from beneath heavy blankets, shuffled foot-by-foot to the trapdoor, and eased down the stairs at the pace of drying paint.

As she entered the bathroom, she closed her eyes before clicking on the light. It was no good. The ventilation fan's timid hum bellowed like a plane propeller in her ears, the noise instigating the sudden, violent spike of a migraine. Heat to her nose and stomach followed, the last red flags before she doubled over the toilet and chummed the basin water.

It didn't last long. The ritual was mostly spent examining herself— wearing yesterday's camisole and underwear, she was surprised— blown asunder by returning nausea. In the orchestra intermissions she recorded fading bruises on her arms and shins.

There were no broken bones.

Marinette gradually finished and bowed to her audience of floor lint, even gave herself a bit of applause after wiping her mouth with toilet paper. When the performance flushed away she turned towards the three-wall alcove for a long soak. She undressed slowly, letting the bathtub fill high, before she dumped herself in without preamble. Steaming water against her skin felt like a blessing.

She touched her temple, remembering what little she could.

It had been years since Ivan and Mylène started dating. As a couple, they'd become one of her life's reliable constants so it was hard to remember when it began. Vague memories of them scampering off together after Madame Bustier's class came to her first, trailed by lycée, and times more recent. No one wanted to separate them. Everyone hoped to bring them closer together. They wanted Mylène to trust Ivan, and to reassure Ivan his love for Mylène was reciprocated. But the two balked and deflected and fought and ran in circles until it was too late.

The pain caused by her friends descended on Marinette. _Ivan_ had squeezed her like a tube. _Ivan_ had crushed her like wet chalk. And it was _Mylène_ who had pushed him to that point.

Her hands shook.

She dragged them under warm water and forced them quiet beneath her thighs. She laid taunt, like a bow string's pull, telling herself she was healed now, promising herself she wasn't hurt anymore. Chat Noir had protected her.

Her chest tightened.

Some called him a savior. Others named him harbinger. Without name or face, Parisians split and scrambled the yolk of his mystery, wondering whether he was even human, to so far if his city accent was rive gauche ou droite. It was gauche, of course; he gave interviews. He was young, like her, and vivacious and brazen. He acted with swift, roguish determination but he also spoke with noble charisma. Every week he espoused the city's people in resisting Papillon's stratagems. He gave them hope. He saved their lives. They didn't know who he was or whence he came but, because of Chat Noir, they had a fighting chance.

The people loved him. She—

"Marinette! Are you all right?"

"F-Fine, maman!" she gasped. "I just—" Her tongue laid heavy in her throat.

"Marinette?"

"I-I'll be out soon!"

She leaned her head back against the tub's curve. If she slammed her cranium against the porcelain it might erase the memory of his green eyes.

Instead she slipped down, knees bending, dunking her head beneath tepid water. She gave herself thirty long seconds, fingers pressing hard into her eyes, before she emerged gasping. Quickly soaping, scrubbing, she rinsed clean. If it was more thorough than usual, maybe harder than necessary, it was in the name of nerves.

Finished, Marinette exited the bath and grabbed her hanging terry robe. She knotted it tight and left the bathroom with a spare towel rubbing through her hair, squeezing out excess water and worries. She hesitated to see her mother by the kitchen's breakfast counter, beautiful but tired. The horror of Stoneheart's attack traced wrinkles through her Chinese paper-white skin. "Maman?"

"Oh," she startled and laughed. "Sorry. Just watching the news."

Marinette looked askance at the television. A morning segment detailed the city's destruction without reserve, pouring over the health and identities of the recovered victims. Those turned to stone had been cured. The injured were healed. But the dead stayed dead.

"Wasn't he one of your classmates?" her mother murmured.

Her eyes drifted, tuning out the details of Ivan's imprisonment. "Yeah."

"Are you okay, honey?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. I didn't really know him," she lied.

Her mother swept around the counter to enter the living room proper. Marinette watched her snatch the remote and punch buttons with her thumb, acting like she could change what happened as easily as she could change channels.

Every station played the same rugged video clips. "Maman, it's okay."

"It's not," she argued. "I don't understand how this happened. Can Papillon" she swallowed tightly at the name "really grab anyone? Was Ivan... evil?"

Marinette felt an urgency to defend her classmate despite the pain he'd caused. "I don't think it works like that. Ivan wasn't evil, just… troubled. Remember what Chat Noir said at the beginning? Papillon can—"

"—only use bad people," her mother finished.

"—only use those with persisting destructive thoughts," Marinette corrected. "So we have to stay positive. Chat Noir will win soon enough."

"I'm not so sure anymore. Now there is a new one, this piáo chóng.A _ladybug!_" she scoffed and ticked off ramblings in her natural chinese. "Chat Noir is calling her his partner but we don't need more miraculous users! She's only going to make things worse."

The towel stilled in Marinette's hand, draped over her head, hiding whatever expression she wore. Her world narrowed to tunnel-vision. That was right: small goals. She had to go get dressed. "I'm going back upstairs," she mumbled and turned away.

Numb, Marinette struggled back to her bedroom. It was hard to lift her feet. It took all her strength to shut the trapdoor gently. She plopped her damp towel across her chaise lounge. Her robe dropped to a pile on the floor. Naked and cold, she burrowed into the soft comfort of her bed and wrapped herself in its silky blankets. It became her protective cocoon, a creamy velvet encasing against the words of her mother and her own secret doubts. She could forget everything and just fall back asleep—

A reminder text pinged close to her ear.

Marinette split one eye open. A glowing phone hid amidst twisted bedsheets. Groaning, she puzzled it loose and flipped through last night's messages. Several were from Alya trying to confirm her her location, her family, her health. Even more were from Nathaniel.

She winced reading through the text exchanges. Her replies were a jumbled mess of fever-dream exclamations. In the twenty-four hours since becoming Coccinelle and then returning to Marinette, she'd dumped rambling, brain-addled replies on them like a drunkard. There wasn't any sense in her answers to their desperate concerns, just a series of dumb, blathering words—

Her eyes widened. She jerked and looked around her room.

It was clean and untouched. Her newest jewelry purchases from last Thursday waited in their complimentary tote. Her winter scarves remained fashionably tied on her bed posters. Her work mannequin endured sixty pins as it styled a new project. Other than her bed blankets currently wrapped around her three layers deep, nothing was knocked over or smashed through or left astray.

How had she detransformed? She didn't remember. When had she gotten home? She didn't know. What had she said to her parents? Nothing came to mind.

Did yesterday really happen?

It happened. She looked at the texts from Alya. Nathaniel was worried. Her mother was distraught. She saw the news. People were dead. Of course it happened.

She looked back at her phone. Both Alya and Nathaniel had chalked up her nonsense to post-traumatic fatigue. It made sense. Anyone would be shaken after going through what she did; and what she'd gone through, from what she could remember, dozed through her like fitful rest dreamt through a long nightmare.

That was it, she thought. It'd been a dream and she was finally awake. It'd been a nightmare and she was still alive. It was a new day, and that was all that mattered. It was just another akuma attack on Paris with Chat Noir saving the day. There was a new girl, a ladybug or whatever, but it wasn't her.

It couldn't have been.

A long, contented sigh released from her as she deflated. Overdue replies, sober this time, were sent to reassure her loved ones. She told them she was nursing something like a hangover; better to let everyone think she was recovering from shell-shock stupor than sugarplum fairies. To be _asleep_—! Goldilock giggles bubbled from her belly. To have _dreamed_—! She laughed outright that she slept deeper in her sheets than in the Catskill Mountains. To have _believed_—! She doubled over in hysterics at the thought of an earring's prick anything more than a cursed spindle.

Another text pinged from beside her. She fumbled for her cell, breaths fluttering with lightheartedness. She rubbed her joy-teary eyes until she could see Madam Cavey's name.

"Oh," she sighed. The atelier was open and all abled staff were meant to return to work.

Marinette leaned back until her head rested against her hard, oak baseboard. Her soft legs skimmed against plush blankets. She closed her eyes in thought as temptations of taking advantage of the city's distress lured her sweetly. Leeway to skipping a day of work was nonexistent in her field. Honestly, she wasn't even surprised by the immediate requirement for her return. Regardless of the atelier's demolition, the summer show was little more than three months away. The days of selecting and fitting models were just around the corner. She didn't begrudge her work; it was her only ambition, her truest desire, but— she was warm and safe at home. She smiled. The atelier would have to go without her for a day.

As she picked up her phone to reply to Cavey, the screen clicked to black. Marinette frowned. A quick press of the power button only yielded a tired buzz and an image of an empty battery. She groaned, figuring she must've forgotten to plug in the device overnight. The damn thing took forever to charge but, without a reply, she knew she had to go. She'd hate for Cavey to report her missing or… worse.

Feeling extremely unlucky, Marinette rolled out bed to pick her day's outfit. She dressed quickly, braided her hair, and reentered the principal floor. Her mother, ever tired and pale, was pouring tea. Cut slices of baguette campagne and jam sat ready.

Marinette nibbled at her breakfast. "Thanks maman."

Her mother critically eyed her street clothes. "Please be careful out there. I know things are better but that doesn't mean it's safe." She hesitated. "It would mean a lot to papa if you'd let him go with you."

"Stop. It's okay. He's been up since four in the morning," she said. She wanted to brush away her mother's misgivings. However, a reluctant, fearful gaze mirrored her own. At least Marinette knew where she got it from. "It's okay," she repeated, softer.

Sabine touched Marinette's cheek. A long, firm stare lingered over every feature, every freckle, before she nodded with understanding. "Fine," she allowed, as if her daughter was thirteen again. "But call me when you get there."

"Yeah, about that— my phone's dead! Sorry!"

"What? How?"

"Don't know. I gotta go, maman! I can't be late. You know how Madame Cavey is—"

"Marinette, don't you dare take another step—"

She raced down the hallway stairs, down the mezzanine floor, and passed the bakery's rez-de-jardin exit to the lobby proper. With a cheeky wave goodbye to her surprised father, Marinette skipped under the store's bell chime to the city street.

She adjusted her scarf tighter around her mouth and nose. Crisp winter-spring winds ruffled her loose bangs and brought alongside an assaulting stench. It smelled like tobacco and burning waste, the muted stink of a densely populated city. But in the gales and glow of sunrise Marinette could tell Paris's morning traffic was sparse. Storefront bells were quiet, replaced by distant police sirens. No one sat in breakfast cafés exchanging pretty morning kisses. No young children passed her, laughing and shouting, in schoolwalk procession. The city was destroyed. People were terrified.

Marinette wobbled on the sidewalk lines as she walked despite cementing one foot in front of the other. Her expectations weren't high per se; Papillion never double-dipped two akuma within a single week. But she trudged forward feeling like she was at the mercy of the devil's whim, wondering how soon until another reaping.

Entering Gare Montparnasse was the same as walking into an empty cavern. She and a dozen others made their way through the concourse of the train station, a muted echo of yesterday. Rested in her memories were groups of merry commuters seated hardily amidst breakfast markets, their railleries buoyed through thronged travelers. It was easy to remember their parodied gestures, their ringing laughter, the bantering appeals they exchanged with comrades and strangers alike, from one end of the open rotunda to the other. It was so simple to extract the faces of bustling young clerks that never shared daylong weariness and fatigue. She could even still hear the musicians, stylishly leaned against stylobate columns, focused with devote fever to melodic morning spectacles, awarded in patience or awe.

Now, though, shoe heels clicked ominously in the air chamber. Now, suffocating, she could hear every hacked cough, every crinkled paper, every thought. When she crossed the depot platform, a robotic greeting for the N02 line jumped her right out of her skin. She barely swallowed a shriek beneath the SNCF time announcements. She willed her jackrabbit heart to rest as she ripped her ticket from its feed.

Marinette boarded her train alone. The twenty minute ride was spent in reflection, kneading her neck of stress. She considered her mother's worry of being without a phone. Her hands already itched for the device's familiar weight. It would be helpful, at least, in drawing her attention away from the gaping absences.

It would help her to ignore the television too. The train's broadcast dock played Alec Cataldi's morning segment. It was popular and eclectic. Each day covered a multitude of topics ranging from DIY home repairs, children talent shows, or finding the best bistros this side of the Seine. But just as she'd seen at home, the coverage converged on Coccinelle's appearance. Like Chat Noir's debut months prior, Cataldi debated the new heroine's super powers— what was her miraculous ornament, why hadn't she appeared sooner— her identity— was she Parisian, did she know Chat Noir intimately— her intentions— how would she and Chat Noir finally stop Papillion, and when would it be?

What little Cataldi could guess was completely wrong. Marinette knew even less herself.

She shook her head. She didn't want to think about it. It was a dream, she repeated, and her mind already throbbed. By the time the train's wheels whined to a halt, she winced through another migraine. It was too loud, too bright. She felt hot and ill. She left the Franklin Metro clutching her forehead, staggered, eyes pointed away from the Rond-Point des Champs-Elysées, hoping to escape. But it was futile. Trapped in memory, flashes of carnage superimposed her walk— her run— down the avenue. There was pulsating pain, dead bodies scattered, the 8th arrondissement ripped to bits—

She collapsed against the atelier's frame, gasping, tears in her eyes. She couldn't go in. This had been a mistake.

She licked her lips. No, she could do this. She had to. Yesterday didn't happen, she told herself, and she was already there. Counting to ten, she breathed deep. She rolled her shoulders. It was okay. It was nothing, she promised. She patted her braid and swept straggling bits of hair behind her ears. All she had to do was put one foot in front of the other and walk through—

The door swung shut behind her. No, no, no, she definitely couldn't do this. The atelier was busier than she'd predicted. It was brighter than she'd anticipated. It was louder than she'd hoped. It was as if her nonsense thoughts had became real. Time reverted, akuma-betrayed friends were reconciled. Everyone was happy. No one looked at the polyethylene sheet covering the building's damage, no one said anything about Claire's absence, and Marinette's stomach roiled to see why:

Gabriel Agreste was there.

Not just in the same country. He was in the same building, in the same room, the same bubble, breathing the same air, right there in front of her, _staring._

It was too late to hide.

Cavey rounded on her in an instant. "Ah, ballerine, here at last. Good morning. Come, come," she beckoned.

Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no. She wheezed a pathetic noise and tried to bite through her cheek. A chill like ice slid down her spine and erupted down her arms. She was frozen. She couldn't move. This was how a mouse died, she thought, sat in hoarfrost, some brief inclination that a mistake had been made right before hawk talons gutted it through—

A hidden needle from Cavey's hand stabbed Marinette's hip. She would've dropped to her knees if not for the tight grip around her upper arm. "I would like you to come with me," she repeated. A hot whisper followed, "Do not embarrass me."

Her senior dragged Marinette to her work station. There was way no out. "Monsieur Agreste, this is the one you mentioned, Mademoiselle Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Mademoiselle, this is Monsieur Gabriel Agreste," Cavey introduced.

She knew who he was. Everyone knew who he was. She could barely breathe. "G-g-good morning, Monsieur Agreste."

He inclined a curt nod. Yesterday's organza slid from his long fingers with a silky whisper. "Good day. Nathalie speaks highly of you, Mademoiselle. I'm glad to finally meet you."

"S-s-same to you, Monsieur—"

"I hope you are focusing as much on the atelier's work as you are on your own commissions?"

"Um— I—?" Her mind raced. What did he mean, 'her own commissions'? Did he know about the set costumes she was designing for the Comédie-Française? Maybe she shouldn't have put her latest Peplum dress online? Was she in trouble again?

Cavey's grip clenched to a bruise. "Jagged Stone, Mademoiselle?"

"O-o-oh," she breathed. "Y-y-yes, certainly, Monsieur. The Jagged Stone piece was just a very small bit of artwork—"

"It was an album cover. It sold 800,000 copies worldwide. Imagine my" he searched for the proper word "_surprise_ when I discovered it was designed by one of my own employees."

Her heart would give sooner than his patience. "I-I-I— u-u-um, yes, M-M-Madame Sancoeur has spoken to me about that—"

"Yes, _that._" Agreste looked as if he was to say more in reprimand but narrowed his features in censure. His eyes drifted back to the dress display. Very fine, tightly twisted yarns weaved an elegant pattern over a crafted violet bodice. His interest churned over the gemmed swirl of plum colors and he almost seemed to sigh. "Nathalie is a fan of Monsieur Stone. She was the one who made the connection between you and the album's cover, after all. At her behest, Monsieur Stone will be attending our summer premier. I have created a signature piece that I feel will be appreciated by him, which I am assigning directly to you, Mademoiselle Dupain-Cheng. Do not disappoint me."

She pitched in dizziness and thanked god Cavey was still clinging tighter than a barnacle. "Y-y-yes, sir! I will do m-m-my butt-most— m-m-my best! My utmost! My—"

"She'll do great," Cavey cut over Marinette's hyperventilating. "This year's summer show will be the best yet. Rest assured, Monsieur."

"I'll leave my design and Madame Vacek's patterns for your distribution. Give my regards to Madame Lousau. I hope she recovers soon." Agreste ticked another nod in response and bid adieu, raising two fingers to wordlessly call Nathalie for his next appointment.

Behind his back, Cavey spread over Marinette like a mat of awash seaweed. "_Ballerine!_ You know what this means, don't you? You know what will happen if he likes your work?"

Marinette couldn't guess. She couldn't even think. "W-what's that?"

Cavey's concerns were rhetorical. Without answering, she moved onto the next big concern. "Hurry! I'll introduce you to your model!"

Her model? Marinette blinked slowly, thoughts coming back online one-by-one as Cavey dragged her through the atelier studio. She was being given a model? But why? Agreste had talked nonsense about her working on a specialty piece for the summer show but that was only a few months from now, and then there was something or other about Jagged Stone but already she couldn't recall. Her thoughts were full of high pitched static and her attention was distracted by coworkers' indignation. As they rushed past, she jostled against work stations and new recruits, tripped on a woman's toes and through elaborately gowned mannequins. Angry exclamations and color popped around her brighter than a sugary drink commercial until, finally, she all but crashed against the front tableau. Spilled mock-up designs grew like a coral reef amidst Cavey's hundred sea urchin sewing needles. Adrien Agreste leaned against a small, spared corner.

Marinette pulled a muscle from whiplash.

"Oh, là, here he is. Ballerine, this is Monsieur Adrien Agreste."

"Hello—"

He was beautiful, standing taller than she remembered, blonde-haired and green-eyed, with a smile so bright and frank she felt like happiness itself became their own little secret. Memories of hidden wishes sparked anew, from childish admiration and tender awe, to powerful teenager imagination kissing him one hundred different ways, to the raw, private pleasures of adulthood when she would lay in bed at night moaning his name—

She went scarlet red. It was Adrien. Of course it was Adrien. It wouldn't be anyone _but_ Adrien, back in town from half a world away, and what the hell was her life, exactly, anyway?

"Hi," she rasped.

Cavey tutted. "Monsieur Agreste, forgive her. This silly girl is Mademoiselle Marinette Dupa—"

"Marinette?" he breathed.

"Yes, Marinette, and—"

"Wait, oh, what?" Adrien pushed off the desk, desperately clutching for Marinette's hands. His face was mired in confusion. "I thought it was— But— _Marinette?_" he repeated. "Is that you? _How?_"

"Adrien?" she squeaked and backed away—

"Marinette, that is _Monsieur_ Agreste to you—"

_Monsieur_ Agreste raised a hand in dismissal of Cavey's reprimand. His words were kind but his voice was clipped. "Please, Adrien is fine. Marinette and I went to school together." Cavey balked, clearly unsure how to proceed, and he took opportunity. "If it's all right, Madame, may I have a moment with an old friend?"

Friend? Marinette's mouth opened in disbelief. She'd been his _stalker_. Flushed horror radiated stronger from her face from incriminating memories. She looked at once to Cavey, trying to make eyes at her to intervene, but the atelier matriarch had been instantly swayed by Adrien's signature sweetness. "By all means, _Monsieur!_"

With no complaints and a sharpness to his eyes, Adrien turned and finally snagged Marinette's hand. His words were urgent. "Come with me."

Her heart hiccuped. He was touching her. This wasn't a good idea. "Y-yeah. Okay. Sure."

Against all recourse, Marinette allowed Adrien to cowherd her to the nearest exit, down a hallway, and around several corners until they were by themselves. The alcove he found was private. Quiet. Unattended. Alone.

When he turned around to face her she literally couldn't remember walking there.

It was the first time she'd seen him in person in seven years, let alone up close. A hollow note pinged in her wistful heart. He was still relentlessly remarkable in the way only truly attractive people were capable of. She was ashamed to recall her freakish infatuation but there was no denying how good looking he'd been, or godly he'd become. A blue-blooded aristocracy was unmistakable in some things, like his high cheekbones or the model cut of his jaw. But he'd acquired a certain crooked fun as well with highlighted hair grown out and styled in a messy sweep. His ears were thin and perfectly curved. His neck was strong, leading to an open chest and setback shoulders. He stood close, but balanced, a crafted pose split between a sweetheart smile and come-hither eyes.

This was definitely a bad, bad idea.

"Sorry about dragging you away." He squeezed her hand and stepped back. He seemed more composed. There was properness in his tone, an old etiquette to his manners. "I don't want to start rumors on day one."

Would he settle for day two?

She mentally slapped herself. "N-no problem. I-I'm sorry too." Wait, no— he didn't know what she was thinking— "I-I mean, I hate rumors too. But you can drag me away." She went bug-eyed. No, that's wasn't what she meant— "That is, if you want. If it's necessary. This seems necessary." She mentally screamed. Why couldn't she _stop_—

Adrien was looking at her like she was crazy, like she wasn't even real, eyebrows quirked and head tilted back. She frantically tried to think around her runaway rambling. "U-u-um, so, anyway, yeah. I didn't know you were back in France."

He hesitated. "Only recently."

"Oh. Right. Okay. For work?"

"Mm, something like that." He smirked and half-laughed. He _chuckled_. She felt faint, floating from butterflies, an awkward strike of shrill giggles escaping her too. Oh, sweet _mercy_, her soul cried, release her now from this pitiful mortal coil—

But Adrien only burst out laughing harder, genuine and loud. "Ah, man. I've missed that." His palm rubbed a teary eye and a friendly reassurance rumbled between them. "It's good to see you Marinette. It's… really good. I just can't believe you're okay."

She _wasn't_ okay. When his hand cut down on Marinette's shoulder in a gentle squeeze her brain short-circuited between honeyed warmth and electric surprise at the contact. She was going to start drooling. She didn't know what to do.

So she kept panicking— "You?!"

"Me?"

"No! Me! Er, you too! It's good to see you too!" Long, deep breaths filled her lungs. She counted to three. She had to get through this. "I've… missed you as well," she confessed. Her face ignited in embarrassment but it was true. She'd missed him.

He squeezed her shoulder again. Then his hand ghosted down her arm as it collected her own, fingers lacing. Goosebumps rippled over her skin. He wasn't like this before, she distantly thought. Younger Adrien was friendly but careful, kind hearted but confined parental censorship. Older Adrien, it seemed, had grown and become more 'hands on'. The last few of minutes of touch far outweighed all their silly school days of smiles and unrequited longing. Her blush was burning calories by this point.

Then he stepped close and her brain went bottom-up bankrupt. Electricity nipped the air between them. Marinette's lips parted in a lightheaded daze as thoughts drifted out of her brain to somewhere else, another plane of existence far beyond—

Adrien smiled but it was thin-lipped if not reserved. His glance drifted to the side and his jaw tightened. She could see the trace of tension aline the cut of muscle, from a kiss beneath his ear down-center to his sternum. "Look, I know this is a lot, after yesterday and all… But I'm not sure if you know…" He swallowed. He licked his lips as his eyes shifted back to her.

She didn't know a damn thing, not even her own name. "Y-yes?"

His voice was a whisper. "Chloé's dead."

What?

"She was killed yesterday. I know it's sudden."

Chloé? Chloé Bourgeouis?

"It was during the akuma attack. I don't know all the details just that… she was hurt."

A hole tore through Marinette. She was speechless. A hacked combination of words escaped— "What— Chloé? I don't understand—"

And she didn't. Stubborn as Marinette might've been about caring for others, the years spent toiling through collège and lycée with Chloé had left her with little regard for the blonde. No matter her age, from nappies to nightclubs, Paris's darling was lovely and vicious and impossible. Being friends with her always led to disastrous fallout. Being 'more than friends' was like a death sentence. Marinette had watched Chloé's loved ones try to improve the crowned princess, try to cure her sadism, but the woman insisted on operating outside of social dependencies. All too often she materialized in scandals and gossip rings like a mythical wave, reminding you of her beauty and magnificence, before crashing down. Relationships broke into timbers of jetsam and flotsam and Chloé delighted as her pawns drowned in the sea of social retribution. Hers was a selfish world, and she'd been an incredibly cruel bully.

And yet, there were tears in Marinette's eyes.

"Hey, are you okay?" Adrien questioned, unsure. He began to pull away and she swayed in conflict, hand braced between him and the wall behind her. She clumsily slid to the floor.

"H-h-how?" she stammered.

Adrien sat close, squeezing her hand and repeating unknown details. "I'm not sure," he whispered. "I guess she was hit in the crossfire."

She wasn't. Marionette began to cry. She wasn't fucking shot.

She thought of Mayor Bourgeouis and how she saw him yesterday. He was on his knees, splattered with rouge, rummaging through the mush of his daughter's innards, her golden hair, her sapphire eyes, trying to collect blood and meat and fleshy bits to put them back right—

But the pieces were broken. She'd been smashed like a bug. Whatever remained of Chloé was gone.

Marionette looked at Adrien. She wanted to tell him. He was Chloé's best friend. She had to tell him—

But where could she begin? What would it serve? It didn't even make sense. It didn't process. "The city was restored," she argued. "People came back. Coccinelle—"

Coccinelle was supposed to make everything right.

Adrien looked at her. She already knew what he was going to say. "Not everything. Not everyone," he murmured.

She knew that. Fuck, she knew that. But hearing it out loud, loaded, lambasted against her was different than a stupid, immature, self-righteous thought haphazard from the morning. God, who had she been three hours ago? Who the fuck did she think she was fooling—

She covered her mouth in a half-wail, half-dry heave. She wanted to rip her earrings straight out from the lobe. She wanted to bleed and die right there instead. Instead she curled on herself, unable to stifle her sobs through suppressed, choking breaths. She pressed her hands against her face, hiding, wet, ragged moans and hot tears, struggling to stop.

Adrien rubbed her back. Her drew her into a hug. She didn't resist.

"I don't know what to say," she croaked. And truly she didn't. It felt like everything had gone wrong and its point of origin was Marinette holding a lacquered box. Because if Chloé was invincible, if she was untouchable, that did that mean for the rest of Paris?

* * *

The return of Marinette's senses poured over her like candied glaze: the motion of a car, the feel of a plush leather seat, the smell of cologne and something delicious, the sight of Adrien lounged opposite her in his personal limo. His weight leaned against a propped elbow as he stared thoughtfully through the tinted window.

It was like a catalogue still frame. Marinette hummed in appreciation.

Their eyes met. "Oh, you're awake."

She blinked twice and winced through yet another spiked headache. Her mouth was parched and her eyelids felt like acme weights. She closed them tight and felt wrong all over. "Where— where am I? What happened?"

"You fell asleep. I'm taking you home."

"Asleep?" She rubbed at her eyes. "_Home?_"

Adrien's look of concern deepened. His eyes flit over her face, worried she wasn't coming around. "Are you okay, Marinette? Do you remember anything?"

Images came rushing, unbidden: the destroyed atelier, her coworkers' screams, a city on fire, the bullet lodged in her shoulder, Fu's crushed body, Ivan's brutality, an engagement ring, the splash of her blood across Chat Noir's lapel—

Gingerly her fingers laid upon her ears and the gem promised there.

Cold seeped into her very bones. She slugged through her words. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'm… awake now."

"Good." Adrien smiled. "I think you cried yourself into exhaustion. Feel any better?"

Marinette looked away. Humiliation struck her cheeks in the deepest showcase red of all morning. It was impossible to feel better. Ivan was imprisoned, Mylene was hospitalized, Chloé was dead, and Adrien thought she was a nutcase. She would never feel better for the rest of her life.

"Yeah, I feel great. Thank you."

Adrien's smile was static. It hadn't rippled since she woke up. "Glad to hear."

A study of passing traffic filled their quiet. Brief snippets of the Seine to her right proved they were on Cours La Reine headed north. She wanted to lay her forehead against the window's cool glass and drift away. Instead she sat stiff, sore, and snipped her words short through the interim. "You didn't have to escort me home."

He raised a brow. The leather seat squeaked as he awkwardly adjusted his weight. "I couldn't exactly leave you laid out on the dressing room floor, could I?"

"I guess not." Wry resignation settled upon her. "You did say you didn't want to start rumors."

"I have a reputation to protect," he preened. Marinette's features softened as he straightened his jacket of invisible wrinkles and ran his fingers through rugged lockes. He was trying so hard to be normal for her.

She smiled in appreciation. "I hope no one got the wrong idea?" she joked. She didn't imagine he championed her through the atelier bridal-style but she wasn't sure how she got in his car either.

For all his peacock displays, Adrien simply gave a lazy shrug. "No one cared. A few of the girls suggested I leave you propped up in the corner."

That sounded about right. "Sorry for being a burden."

"You're not a burden."

She hesitated. "Well, an inconvenience then."

"You're not an inconvenience." He met her eyes firmly.

She looked out the window. Her vision was dry and itchy. "I'm just saying you could've gotten someone else. You could've just called a cab."

"Your phone was dead. The company records were destroyed in yesterday's attack. No one knew where you lived except me." She peaked at him from the corner of her eyes. He was leaned forward, forearms on his knees, staring her down with ripe insult. "And I'm not going to just dump you into some random cab."

Right then. She blinked to clear away her watery-eyed self loathing. An attempt to laugh pushed through her. "Got it. So you volunteered to make sure I got home. Good thing I still live with my parents!"

His face soured like she'd fed him a dollop of bitter sarcasm. "Living at home isn't so bad Marinette. I did it too." Dry laughter bounced in the small space. "Unwillingly, at that."

"I didn't mean—"

"Sorry, I know," he interrupted. There was a pregnant pause. He sighed and leaned back. "Touchy subject."

"It's okay." She knew he didn't mean to snap at her. Lines of unhappiness dredged across his forehead for it. He adamantly looked out the window, at the seat, at the ceiling, anything but her. Marinette knew the discord of his home had always been there but— it was more publicized these days. It was part of her wonder why he was even back home. "I-I guess you've got your own place now."

He nodded. "Yeah. I'm up by Avenue d'Eylau."

God bless him. She ran a hand down her face, hiding any sardonic suffering. God bless Adrien Agreste for innocently commenting he lived off one of the wealthiest streets in Paris. "That's cool."

"How's your mom and dad doing?"

"They're good." She didn't feel right talking about her parents when the subject of his were so taboo. "Sorry I fell asleep on you."

"It's okay. I shouldn't have brought up Chloé like that."

A deep pulse pushed through her heart. "You didn't do anything wrong. I just… never thought she'd die," she admitted. She breathed the girl's name: "Chloé Bourgeouis. She was… something else. It's crazy to even imagine. Why didn't Chat Noir…" she trailed off and it was like she could hear Adrien's spine click rigid. She looked at him. "What?"

"—why didn't Chat Noir?" he prompted.

Marinette shook her head. She didn't know. She was just talking. "It's nothing."

"Say it."

"What? No," she bristled. "It's not his fault. Forget it."

"You thought it." And it was clear Adrien thought it too. He sounded like someone else, a person dark and alone. Marinette tilted her head and studied him. His face was ashen, skin bloodless, eyelids low. His arms were crossed tight. His legs sank into the floor like sequoia redwoods. He was still as stone but she had every thought he wanted to leap out the door.

"Adrien," she hedged, "are you okay?"

"I'm fine." His fingers dug into his arms.

She sighed. He wasn't but she didn't want to push. She hadn't meant to critique his celebrity idol. It wasn't like Adrien knew Chloé had died on the steps of l'Église Saint-Augustin. And, to be fair, it wasn't like Chat Noir was wholly at fault either. With a murmur, Marinette evened the playing field. "I guess she failed too."

"Who?"

She swallowed her own name. "Coccinelle."

Adrien's face went dark. "Excuse me?"

"It's true. You said it yourself." Fu had called her the benefactor of rebirth. News agencies cobbled together a story much the same. And even if Chat Noir was out there, wherever, beseeching praise for her, it was Adrien's words that rang in her ears: she remembered doing nothing and saving no one. "She didn't restore everything. She didn't revive everyone. I— I don't think she healed anyone at all, actually."

"_What_—" His eyes narrowed. She'd never seen him look so angry before. "What are you talking about?!"

"I—" Her mouth opened and closed. "I-I just think—"

"Marinette,_ you_ are alive because of her!"

"_Me?_"

"You were shot. And you—" He swallowed.

Her eyes shot open. Clammy hands gripped her jeans. "Wait, wait," she rasped, "you saw me? You were there?"

He looked away. His words were low. "I… was at the Roosevelt Metro."

"Adrien…" she trailed off. Yesterday's horror made her stomach flip. "What did you see?"

He shook his head. "I saw you run into the Artcurial. And then—" He became quiet. His fingers had gone white from his grip. "It collapsed."

Twenty thousand tonnes of collapsed mortar left little leeway for hope. To him, she had died yesterday morning and he'd been powerless watching it happen. "You thought…?"

"What was I supposed to think?" His flat gaze leveled back to her, green eyes gleaming. "It's because of Coccinelle you're alive. She brought you back."

Marinette stared dumbly at him and his echo of truth. From a certain vantage point, he was right. But he was also supremely wrong.

It was like giving a name to a bird— a Java sparrow, a Gouldian finch, a diamond firetail, a red avadavat— and never knowing it could fly. Adrien knew Coccinelle in concept, by name, in the chiseled relief of Papillion and Chat Noir, like a refraction from darkness is expected to always be light. But he knew absolutely nothing about _her_, and perceived even less of the great principle of rebirth and its truths. It was the difference between licking floor crumbs and sitting at the front of Sessrúmnir.

The lodestone was pierced through her body. But when she had called upon that wellspring of power, it had shuddered against her like she was the open wound. And so she had walked right past Chloé's father and through puddles of blood twice, in and out again. Nothing had been done for them— for any of them.

Adrien would never understand. He would never be able to.

She hung her head and sat in silence until the car slowed. It stopped outside her parent's bakery.

"Marinette?"

"Oh," she breathed. She grabbed the door handle and swung it open, exiting the vehicle in a stiff dizziness. She brushed her jeans as she stood and tried not to trip while stepping onto the curb. Adrien, suddenly at her side but seconds too late, offered his hand and let it hang unnecessarily. Taking pity, she gently squeezed his fingers in thanks. Every act of his kindness that day had been inessential but she appreciated each gesture all the same.

She began to walk towards the bakery door. "Marinette—"

"Yes?" She turned around.

Adrien faced her, one hand still outstretched, the other rubbing the back of his neck. Eyes downcast, he stepped closer. He reached for her again to tie their fingers together once more.

"Don't go thinking that there are other people, better people," he looked up, "or someone more deserving than you. Chloé may be gone… but you were meant to still be here."

Her heart lurched forward. "Adrien… I…"

She didn't know what to say.

He smiled and gave a small, final squeeze. "I should head back. Adieu _mademoiselle._"

She didn't reply. She couldn't. She stood there in demure glow as her old schoolmate ducked back into his side of the limo and drove off. Minutes, maybe even hours, went by until she heard the little chiming bell of home tickle her ears.

"Marinette, what're you doing? Are you just going to stand out here all day?"

"No, papa. I'll be just a moment." But she couldn't turn her feet to move inside. For all her words, she stayed planted right where Adrien had struck her in love all over again.


End file.
